With the persuasiveness of a rattlesnake and the charisma of a cow, the second-in-command terrorist Netanyahu could get no less than 43 – more than one per minute, mostly standing – ovations from the US Congressmen. They came over and over again for the most empty, preposterous or outrageous statements – including a 2500-years posthumous one for the Biblical figure of Esther, put forward to denounce the alleged genocidal intentions of Iran, modern Haman, against the Jewish people. Such abysses of subservience can be perplexing, especially from the representatives of the main world superpower. They remind of this extract of Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago, describing the Terror under Stalin :

« Here is one vignette from those years as it
actually occurred. A district Party conference was under way in Moscow
Province. It was presided over by a new secretary of the District Party
Committee, replacing one recently arrested. At the conclusion of the
conference, a tribute to Comrade Stalin was called for. Of course, everyone
stood up (just as everyone had leaped to his feet during the conference at
every mention of his name). The small hall echoed with “stormy applause, rising
to an ovation.” For three minutes, four minutes, five minutes, the “stormy
applause, rising to an ovation”, continued. But palms were getting sore and
raised arms were already aching. And the older people were panting from
exhaustion. It was becoming insufferably silly even those who really adored
Stalin. However, who would dare be the first to stop? The secretary of the
District Party Committee could have done it. He was standing on the platform,
and it was he who had just called for the ovation. But he was a newcomer. He had
taken the place of a man who’d been arrested. He was afraid! After all, NKVD
men were standing in the hall applauding and watching to see who quit first!
And in that obscure, small hall, unknown to the Leader, the applause went
on-six, seven, eight minutes! They were done for! Their goose was cooked! They
couldn’t stop now till they collapsed with heart attacks! At the rear of the
hall, which was crowded, they could of course cheat a bit, clap less
frequently, less vigorously, not so eagerly-but up there with the presidium
where everyone could see them? The director of the local paper factory, an
independent and strong-minded man, stood with the presidium. Aware of all the
falsity and all the impossibility of the situation, he still kept on
applauding! Nine minutes! Ten! In anguish he watched the secretary of the District
Party Committee, but the latter dared not stop. Insanity! To the last man! With
make-believe enthusiasm on their faces, looking at each other with faint hope,
the district leaders were just going to go on and on applauding till they fell
where they stood, till they were carried out of the hall on stretchers! And
even then those who were left would not falter... Then, after eleven minutes,
the director of the paper factory assumed a businesslike expression and sat
down in his seat. And, oh, a miracle took place! Where had the universal,
uninhibited, indescribable enthusiasm gone? To a man, everyone else stopped
dead and sat down. They had been saved! The squirrel had been smart enough to
jump off his revolving wheel.

That, however, was how they discovered who the
independent people were. And that was how they went about eliminating them.
That same night the factory director was arrested. They easily pasted ten years
on him on the pretext of something quite different. But after he had signed
Form 206, the final document of the interrogation, his interrogator reminded
him:

“Don’t ever be the first to stop applauding!”

(And just what are we supposed to do? How are we
supposed to stop?)

Now that’s what Darwin’s natural selection is.
And that’s also how to grind people down with stupidity. »